BiNED to be expanded at ceremony in Harlingen today

In a historic show of unity, the cities of Brownsville, Matamoros, Harlingen, McAllen, Edinburg and Reynosa and the counties of Cameron and Hidalgo will today sign an agreement to maximize economic development opportunities.

The vehicle for this cooperation is the Bi-National Economic Development grouping. BiNED was formed in March 2014 by the mayors of Brownsville, Harlingen and Matamoros, in conjunction with Congressman Filemon Vela.

An agreement signed at the Regional Academic Health Center in Harlingen today will see the group expanded through the inclusion of Cameron and Hidalgo counties and the cities of Reynosa, Edinburg and McAllen. Congressman Vela will give the keynote speech. The event starts at 10 a.m.

To set the scene for the agreement, the Rio Grande Guardian interviewed one of the visionaries behind BiNED – Mike Gonzalez, executive director of United Brownsville.

“I think this deserves to be called an historic event for our region because for the first time ever we are going to be working together on an advanced manufacturing strategy,” Gonzalez said. Asked why BiNED was started, Gonzalez said:

“When we started BiNED we had a very simple premise, we need to capture more of the opportunities coming through here. In Brownsville, we looked at ways to capture more of the manufacturing clusters. This called for the development of an advanced manufacturing strategy. Well, when you look at it you see that all the supply lines run outside of the city’s boundary. We decided we definitely needed Matamoros and we kind of needed Cameron County. That is where the original partnership was at.” . . . read more at Rio Grande Guardian